The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  A wightish encounter, Sianadh had said once, bore little similarity to attacks by human aggressors, which were usually direct confrontations involving brute force. Wights, he had told Imrhien, must perforce obey their own natural laws. Just as men could not become invisible or shift their shape in the manner native to wights, so wights—save, perhaps, for the most powerful—could not move against mortals unless certain conditions were fulfilled, certain actions taken or words spoken. If fear was shown, or if a mortal should be foolish enough to let his senses be tricked, or should he break certain silences or reveal his true name or answer questions ignorantly, or if he should transgress against wights by trespass or other means, then the creatures of eldritch could strike. Then the unfortunate man might be torn apart, drained of blood, crushed, hung, or slain by any manner or means, or he might simply die of fright. Yet even then, there was a chance he might still be saved by fleetness of foot, quick-wittedness, valor, intervention from others, or pure luck.

  The caravan was a week out of Gilvaris Tarv when scouts came galloping back to report that the Road ahead, passing through a narrow gap between hills, was obstructed by fallen rocks. Men on horseback or on foot were able to get through, but there was no chance for wagons and coaches. At the head of the convoy, Chambord’s captain, mounted on a black gelding, raised his hand. Drivers reined in, and the caravan ground to a halt. The merchant spoke to his captain. Orders were relayed down the line.

  “We are to detour off the main Road. We are to take the side road that runs through Etherian and loops back to the highway.”

  A ripple of excitement ran through the caravan. Not wishing to rouse Muirne from her reverie by asking questions, Imrhien clasped her hands and sat still. Beside her, two women held converse.

  “Etherian! Well, I never thought to see that land. I wonder if ’tis as strange as the tales report. I should like to see those queer little folk what live there.”

  “I hope its entertainment makes up for the extra miles on this journey,” grumbled the other.

  Soon after, the lead wagons turned aside to the south. Trees thinned, then dwindled and disappeared. The sky opened out, a hemisphere of rich lapis lazuli lightly frosted with cirrocumulus in vast, sweeping bands so thin that the sun shone through like a giant dahlia.

  The day wore on. The dying sun colored the uplands with glowing rose and hazed them with somber gold. Late in the afternoon, the cavalcade rounded a knoll to behold a sudden, majestic sight.

  Spread out before and below them lay a massive canyon, some three miles across, slashed deeply into the surface of the land. So far away was its opposite end that it disappeared into a veil of motes and dust. The sunken floor was lost in shadow. Half a mile away on the rocky wall to the left hung a silver ribbon twined with streamers of mist. The roar of this towering cataract was lost in the vastness of the gulf its waters had created.

  Yet, in sculpting this chasm, the river’s power had not been enough to erode certain formations—cores of adamant, resistant to water and wind. These cores now stood by the tens of thousands, tall and spindly columns scattered throughout the canyon. Their flat tops, two hundred feet or more from their roots, were level with the gorge’s lip and the surrounding countryside. It appeared like a giant forest of thin and limbless trees, all cut off at the same height.

  A precipitous path had been hacked into the sides of this monumental cavity. As the caravan snaked its way down this road, it could be seen that dwellings existed atop the columns; angular houses of pebbles and clay, and these were linked to one another by spidery suspended bridges and attenuated ropes.

  Channeled by the rocky walls, the wind here was strong, an almost palpable force. The canyon’s shape scooped up its currents, forcing them to rise against the cliff walls and throwing them skyward with a plaintive whistling. On these ascending airs, dark forms hovered and swooped. They were not birds, that was plain to see by their shape—some looked like pointy triangles underwired by struts in which manlike shapes were cradled, others appeared to be large bats.

  “There they are—the Clanneun,” said one of the women, pointing them out to her child, “the bat-winged folk. Do not be afraid, they will not harm us.”

  That night the caravaners made camp by the river that flowed through Etherian, lighting their fires and setting guards to watch. Darkness fell swiftly in the depths, and the singing of the silver waters, fed by a thousand filaments down the cliffs, rang louder.

  From the conversation of the other passengers, Imrhien gleaned that the Clanneun, being diminutive of stature and possessing membranes attached between arms and body, could stretch out their arms to glide for short distances, like bats and flying foxes. When they needed to carry their children or other burdens, they used the kitelike contraptions or the bridges or ropes with pulleys, to traverse from column to column. It seemed they lived mainly on cliff-side vegetation and on flying insects, of which there were many in the darkling air. These they captured in fine nets strung between columns or plucked out of the air as they glided from platform to platform. They collected their water from the rain and the dew or from the tops of the cataracts. Never did they stoop to the canyon’s floor, where unseelie perils sometimes lurked. Not much else was known about them. Their culture and language were their own—they did not mix with other peoples but lived apart in their strange land, neither molested nor molesting, safe in their aerial abodes.

  “Do not throw stones, or loose arrows,” came the orders. “Leave the Clanneun to themselves, that we may pass through their domain swiftly and in peace.”

  Diarmid stopped at the fire beside Imrhien’s wagon to inquire politely after the welfare of his sister and her companion, then disappeared as quickly as he had arrived. He ate, slept, and worked with the other guards. His words were sparse and his appearances sparser.

  The next morning they broke camp early and thus were able to cross Etherian and climb out at the other end of the canyon before the end of the day. The difficult cliff path with its hairpin bends brought the convoy up into thick and gloomy forest.

  “Word is that we shall not reach the main Road again before dark,” said one of the women in Imrhien’s wagon. “We must soon stop in the nether fringes of Tiriendor for the night. I mislike these lonely backwoods, far from the main Road. I’d as lief be back in Etherian—queer it was, but it did have a more comfortable feeling.”

  Indeed, a sense of disquiet and fear emanated from the woods. Horses and hounds were restless. Children whimpered peevishly. Folk turned their heads to the north, then glanced quickly back over their shoulders. Imrhien guessed she was not alone in sensing some kind of pulling toward that direction—a leaning, as of grasses bowing beneath a northbound jet stream. The air strummed like a taut wire at breaking point.

  “The glades of Tiriendor have a wightish feel,” someone muttered. Someone else tried to begin a song, but the words and tune fell flat and trailed into nothing.

  The caravan rumbled to a halt in the middle of the road, with the half-leafless boughs of elms trembling overhead. Wheels were chocked, horses were unharnessed, fires were lit. After rechecking their protective gear, the caravaners snugged in for the night.

  Around midnight, strange knocking sounds erupted from among the trees a short way off the road. From another approach, a great, shaggy black dog, nearly the size of a calf, appeared at the verge of the firelight. It stood staring at a group of guards, its large eyes like flaming coals.

  Not a man spoke. They stood like propped cadavers. Their own hounds growled, hackles raised, but would not attack. One man slipped away to fetch the caravan’s wizard. When he arrived, the black dog turned and padded back into the forest.

  The wizard trotted up and down on a gray palfrey, chanting incantations. A barrel-chested cockerel flapped on his gloved hand. The guards whistled tunelessly, eerily, well into the night.

  The period just before dawn, which the Erts called uhta, brought an intense shang wind. Chambord’s captain ordered the caravaners
to stay put until it had passed over. The unstorm engendered the usual colored lights, but no tableaux.

  “Nobody ever passed this way to make ghosts,” said a traveler. “I am surprised there is a road at all.”

  “’Tis an old byroad,” said her companion, “very old, made in the times when they knew how to make ’em last forever.”

  As soon as the last light and chime had died away, the caravaners bestirred themselves. Although gray-shadowed leaves partly concealed the sun, the knowledge of its rising cheered most people. Toward noon they struck the main Road again, now past the blocked section. From here it began to slope steadily down—more and more often it crossed bridges. The Forest of Tiriendor, however, refused to be left behind and crowded as closely to the edges of the Caermelor Road as it had to the Etherian back road.

  That afternoon, livid clouds swarmed in from the northeast and covered the face of the sun. The trees locked their branches together over the roadway. Shadows congested. The premonition of danger that had taken root the night before now intensified. Muirne sat beside Imrhien on the wagon’s tailboard, her gaze darting from right to left. She had strapped her quiver to her back, and now she drew an arrow from it, nocking it to the bowstring.

  “I saw something just now, by the wayside. It ran away. I want to be ready.”

  Grief and loss seemed to have hardened the Ertish girl. Some of her diffidence had evaporated, and so had the antipathy she had shown to Imrhien. Grateful for the friendship that had existed between them during their time of imprisonment and knowing that after all, the wizard’s patient had not been to blame for it, Muirne had come to regard her Talith companion with friendship. For her part, Imrhien respected and admired Muirne’s skills at weaponry and horsemanship.

  Imrhien touched her arm and pointed. <>

  “What?… Aye, I saw. It was another like the first. They move quicklike.” She narrowed her eyes. “Nasty little skeerdas, I’ll warrant.”

  Diarmid cantered past.

  “Be aware, Muirne,” he called. She waved acknowledgment.

  “’Tis curious for wights to be sticking out their noses so much in daylight hours,” she mused, watching her brother ride on down the line. “Their glorytime be the night. Either there be something after chasing them, or they simply be about in great numbers. Or both. No matter—the guards say we shall be clear of these woods by nightfall.”

  As she spoke, a commotion erupted from up ahead, a splintering crash and the neighing of frightened horses, shouting, the dire clash of iron. Some guards sped past, others held to their stations in case this was a planned diversion, the tactics of ambush.

  “The second wagon has gone down in a rut,” called a voice. “The axle is broken. None of the others can get past.”

  The disabled cart was past mending. Its contents had to be distributed among the other wains before they could go forward, and the detritus cleared from the Road. This caused a delay, which meant that the caravan was still plodding among the trees when darkness gathered. Greenish phosphorescence winked on all sides, misleading the eye. Horses blundered off the roadside and into tree trunks invisible in the murk.

  Orders were shouted.

  “Halt and make camp on the Road.”

  Once again the drivers stationed the line of wagons, coaches, and carts along the middle of the thoroughfare. The horses were taken out of the shafts and tethered alongside. Campfires burned rosy between the wains, chasing away the shadows for a few feet around. Beyond these globes of light the silent darkness pressed heavily, a wall. Guards moved along the camp’s perimeters. After the evening meal, some caravaners lay wakeful within their wagons, others sat by the fires, speaking in hushed tones. Save for the random jingling of harness and the crunch of boots, all was quiet; no hunting owls or melancholy night-birds cried.

  Seated in their customary place on the wagon’s tailboard, Imrhien and Muirne stared into the profound shadows interlaced between the trees.

  “Mother of Warriors, save us,” Muirne whispered. “Last night was bad enough. I’ll not sleep this night. This has the feel of an ambush.”

  They stoked up the fires and, with the cold certainty of doom, kept vigil.

  The encounters began at midnight.

  It was as dark as blindness. In the total silence, not a whisper or a sigh could be heard. Eventually, somewhere in the deeps of the Forest of Tiriendor, a wind went through, rustling the leaves like the sough of the ocean. And then the firelight lit up a pearly Something coming down the Road. It was not fog. Alive, woolly, like a cloud or a wet blanket, giving off a terrible coldness and a stale smell, it slid up and all over the wagons, the carts, the coaches, the horses, the hounds, the caravaners, in every nook and cranny, and then was gone, rolling and bowling and stretching out and in, down the Road.

  Nerveless, aghast, the caravaners leaned together in a lethargy bequeathed by shock.

  Shortly thereafter, sounds of bubbling laughter and cheerful conversation flew out from the trees like a flock of brilliant birds. Alerted, shaken to their senses, the guards drew out their blades, the ringing rasp of their steel cutting briefly across the darkness. The other travelers stiffened, bracing themselves, grasping their charms, and muttering incantations. Lights shone out from between the trees, accompanied by strains of music and snatches of song. The rhythm of the tune was so rapid, the cadences so lilting and compellingly harmonious, that those who heard it felt their toes twitch in their shoes, tapped their fingers in spite of their dread, and quickened to the beat. There came into view, where the lights shone forth, a large circle of dancers—charming young damsels, it seemed, skipping with grace and delighted abandon, laughing, singing, breathless in their exuberance. Their filmy robes flew about them like banners of mist, green, gold, and silver; their hair was snagged with sparkling flowers; and each face was comelier than the next.

  “An old trick of the baobhansith,” murmured Muirne. “All folk know of it, and none would be foolish enough to fall.”

  But they were oh, so guileless, those damsels—so lighthearted and innocent, the music utterly enticing, the movements of the dance thoroughly alluring. A thrill, akin to the exhilaration of shang yet not it, roused in the pale-haired watcher. Against all reason, it seemed that what she desired urgently in that instant was for Diarmid to come galloping up, so that she could jump up behind him, her arms about his waist; then they two would ride to join the circle, escaping the fear and dreariness of the stolid wagons.

  Uproar broke out farther down the line.

  A report rippled down the column. One of the younger guards had slipped into the forest before he could be stopped—for a better look, he had said over his shoulder as he departed—not to enter the circle, oh no, he was no fool—but just to see the pretty creatures at closer range. Knowing too well what fate awaited the bedazzled youth, two of his comrades had plunged in after him. The captain had issued orders that on pain of flogging, no more should leave the Road, but it was too late for the three. All the caravaners could see them clearly, dancing in the lighted circle, their feet scarcely touching the ground, whirling their delectable partners in time to the piped reel. They were grinning like death’s-heads.

  “See how they laugh,” said someone in horrified fascination. “The baobhansith have done nothing to them.”

  “Yet,” added another.

  Stung to a restlessness of yearning by the music, Muirne’s companion sprang down and walked, barely noticed, up the line. The attention of the caravaners was directed outward.

  Something moved in from the side of the Road to where two guards were standing. Instinctively Imrhien shrank back into shadow. She saw a shining of wet leaves after rain, a moonbeam—it was not one of the caravan women approaching. Such loveliness was never of mortal ilk.

  Metal pealed. The blades of the guards flashed to the ready. Stepping back a pace, and with a small gasp like the cooing of a dove, the object of their attention held out a reproachful hand, soft and white as the poisonous spat
he of the arum lily.

  “Do not affright me, Han! Will you not conduct me across the Road, that I may join the Dance?”

  “Hypericum, salt, and bread …,” began one of the men.

  Her pale, narrow hands flew to her ears.

  “Oh, sir,” she sobbed, “do you take me for some wight? I had thought you a gentleman, alas. Well, then I shall try my own way if no help is to be found.”

  She turned away a little too quickly, but the guard who had been silent sheathed his sword and moved to her side.

  “If you are no wight, what do you here?”

  “Have you not seen me, Han? I am a traveler.”

  “I have not seen you before. But as a traveler you may not leave the Road.”

  “Oh, but my sisters are in the woods—how shall I reach them?” she sighed, looking at him from the corners of eyes that glinted as green as jealousy.

  “Weep not. I shall help you find them. Wait for me, Greb.”

  The other stood uncertainly, dazed, his blade lowered and forgotten.

  “But …”

  The couple vanished among the trees. A moment later the second man followed. Unable to shout a warning that might bring back their ability to reason, Imrhien ran after them for a short distance. The tree-boles rapidly crowded in between her and the Road until, on reaching a spot where only one thin blade of firelight sliced through them, she halted. Her hair stood up. A great horror squeezed her throat, and she began to retrace her steps, but it was hard going, as if something heavy dragged at her legs, as if she were wading through the deep and treacherous mud of the fens.

  At her back, a terrible scream ripped through the night.

  Imrhien regained the grassy verge. Muirne was there, pulling her onto the Road.

  “Daruhshie! What be ye a-thinking of?”

  A man staggered out of the trees, corpse-white, silent, shivering convulsively.